A Luxe 20-Hour Flight Could Become A Reality, Complete With A Gym And Bunk Beds
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Non-stop travel from Sydney to London is on the horizon, and Qantas Airways is right at the forefront with plans for a luxurious 20-hour flight.
Qantas is creating a project specifically to make it from Australia to Europe. It’s called Project Sunrise. The planned plane will fly about 300 passengers, a marathon of a flight with enough fuel to carry those people and hit headwinds around the globe.
Last year, the Qantas Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce tossed out a public challenge to airplane manufacturers to create a plane that can make it halfway around the world in one go. And Boeing Co. and Airbus SE came through, creating ideas for a plane that would use space very differently than your average 747.
There’s talk of building sleeping bunks, child-care facilities, a gym and even a bar. Qantas pitted the two manufacturers against each other in order to pump up the competition, both in innovation and price. That could be good news for any of us normal people who may want to take a long-range flight in the future — cooler planes and lower than sky-high costs.
Airbus is already building sleeping bunks on its A330 that will be available as soon as 2020. The beds are housed in the airplane’s cargo compartments, putting customers in different parts of the plane than they usually see.
But the 20-hour flight won’t be hitting the skies until 2022, according to Qantas’ CEO. It’ll beat Qatar Airways record for the longest flight from Doha, Qatar to Auckland, Australia and Singapore Airlines’ new nonstop flight from Singapore to New York. And if Qantas succeeds, it could open the door for long nonstop flights to more cities around the world. Welcome to the future.
[h/t Bloomberg]
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